Suppose you’re an art historian, and you write nonfiction. Suppose you’re studying Vincent van Gogh, and you know that he was acquainted with a prostitute named Rachel in 1888 Provence. That for some reason he cut off part of his ear and gave it to her. Who was this girl? How well did Vincent know her? Was he just a customer, or was their relationship something more? If you’re writing nonfiction, you can only go so far, then you have to stop. Ultimately you must admit that neither you nor anyone else will ever know the truth of Vincent and Rachel.
But if you’re writing a novel — if you’re writing historical fiction — “we’ll never know” quickly transforms into “what if?” The doors that seemed closed can be thrown wide open, your imagination can roam freely, and the mysteries big and small that make scholars shrug can become your blank canvas. I’m an art historian by trade and a longtime van Gogh fangirl, and one day, after an evocative visit to Auvers-sur-Oise in France (where Vincent is buried), I thought to myself “what if?” What if Vincent was hiding something from his brother Theo all those months in Provence? What if Rachel and Vincent were more than just prostitute and customer? What if … ?
I spent many months writing Sunflowers, during which I immersed myself in Vincent’s artwork, his letters, and the plethora of van Gogh scholarship. I stood before his paintings in museums; I traveled to France and the Netherlands and walked in his footsteps. Historical novelists, for all their freedom and what-if’ing, still have an enormous responsibility, especially when writing about an actual historical figure. I couldn’t just change the facts of Vincent’s life on a whim to suit my plot, and I needed to build the fictional story on a solid historical framework. Luckily there was no shortage of research to work with: we know the ground plan and measurements of Vincent’s famous yellow house in Arles, the sites of most paintings he painted and where he must have been standing, even the weather on specific days he was out working. Yet there is plenty we don’t know — and that’s where “what if” came into play. I admit, sometimes I wondered if what I was imagining could have actually happened!
It’s a magical thing, “what if.” For a historical novelist, it might be the most powerful phrase in our arsenal of words — it’s our Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, our Open Sesame. It leads us places we never expected, and hopefully, it brings our readers along for the ride. Sunflowers is Sheramy Bundrick’s first novel and will be released on 13 October 2009 from Avon-A/HarperCollins.
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